


The Cost of a Crown

by StarlightLion



Category: Dishonored (Video Games)
Genre: Darkfic? Darkfic, Daud is Not Okay, Drabblespawn, F/F, Let's fuck up the whole timeline, Low Chaos Daud, The Brigmore Witches - Freeform, The Knife of Dunwall, and neither am i, fugitive!Corvo, low chaos Corvo to high chaos Corvo, mind forkery my guys, oh boy this is a hell of a oneshot, so much nonsense
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-06
Updated: 2018-10-20
Packaged: 2019-07-27 03:52:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 20,819
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16210841
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/StarlightLion/pseuds/StarlightLion
Summary: Delilah succeeds.She becomes Emily, and becomeseverythingof Emily. Her love for her dead mother and secret father; her devotion to the Empire and all her subjects, to Dunwall particularly. Her fear, her nightmares, her desires. For all that Delilah wanted, she cannot ignore everything that remains of Emily inside her, even as she rules from inside Emily.Delilah succeeds, and it isnothingthat she dreamed of.Now a dumping ground for every scene that happens at some point in this AU. Don't expect chronology here, folks, just the rambling drabbles of a fretful mind.





	1. True Art Comes With A Soul

**Author's Note:**

> So I'm meant to be writing the THI4F x Dishonored fic and I'mma get right back to that because I love it, I sincerely do, but this shit just came screaming out of the Void and smacked me on BOTH CHEEKS and I had to just... whip this up real quick.
> 
> Update: The lovely Inky Che has written a translation into Russian that [can be found here!](https://ficbook.net/readfic/7428650)  
> Thank you very much <3

When Daud finds Delilah, he is already a broken man.

Already, he has spilled blood that turned out to be poison on his own blade - an Empress, who had not spared even a shred of hatred for him as he drove his sword through her body, and instead had given all the love she had left to the family who’d watched him do it.

Already, he has sent away the daughter he had never had, and never admitted to - for she had seen through all his masks and looked upon the shattered old man beneath and found him _wanting,_ and through some cruel miracle had found within herself too much lingering devotion to offer the bloody end he deserves, instead abandoning him to seek out her own happiness. Whatever there is to be had of it.

Already, and he has left all his Whalers behind to do this, because he is every bit the worthless bastard Lurk had suspected and when this is over, even if he lives through it, they will lose their leader and then lose their way, and he will not be there to help them find a new one. Daud rather fancies that most of them will fail, but even an assassin is vulnerable alone.

Dunwall has no mercy for the vulnerable. In this city, vulnerable makes for an easy meal.

When Delilah pauses in her ritual to find Daud, he is already a broken man. Broken - and utterly formidable. As they clash in her picturesque island somewhere between the real world and the Void, Daud comes to see that while she is powerful and knows her way around her Mark, if it comes down to simple combat then he is her superior. If it comes down to her death or his, he will best her and strike her down and never would the world be ever the wiser of the theft of Crown that came not to be.

But Daud has the blood of an Empress on his hands, and he will not wash it off in the blood of another. In the end, it is his refusal to kill that is his undoing. His idea is half-baked and fraught with peril to begin with - completing the ritual runs counter to everything that he came here to do. When Delilah sees that he’s switched out the paintings, he expects outrage. He expects to have to fight all the harder.

Instead, she _laughs._

And in the end, when she has nailed him against the altar with thorns buried in every part of his body, and explains that he’s a _fool_ to think she’s only capable of the ritual once, he understands.

And he understands that he has failed.

The Outsider meets him, briefly, in the Void after Delilah banishes him to it for eternity. Just the once.

_“How sad an end to a sad, bloody tale, Daud. How does it feel, to know that ultimately, you have nothing left but failure?”_

Daud doesn’t respond, because the black-eyed bastard is right. Even at the start to all this - killing Jessamine Kaldwin. He hasn’t succeeded in a contract; he hasn’t even succeeded in being the catalyst for disaster. All he’s done, in the end, is fail to change a single damn thing.

_“On second thought, I suppose that’s not quite true, Daud. After all, you still have my Mark.”_

The Outsider leaves him then, and Daud stares at his hand for a long time. Or an instant. It doesn’t matter, here, in the Void. An eternity means nothing when there’s nowhere for it to begin, and nothing with which to end it. There is no time left to Daud, anymore. No meaning. Perhaps, he wonders in some distant part of himself, that means that there is no failure either.

Just the Mark, and the infinity from whence it came.

* * *

The last thing Emily is aware of is running. She feels the unspooling of her thoughts, feels the distant pull on her mind as someone else unravels their shape and steps inside. She is ten years old, and she doesn’t understand what is happening or why - but she hears a voice that she does not know and cannot be heard by anyone else, and she runs as hard as she can for the last sanctuary left in her life.

She finds him, just across the hall, in the same quarters he’s had for her entire life, on his feet already when she bursts through his door, frantic and terrified. He’s holding his sword, and Emily fights the feeling of safety that brings her because she can still feel her emotions melting into puddles inside her own body. She doesn’t understand him, when he speaks, but he catches her wild sprint into him, drops his sword, holds her tight. She recognises that terror filling his eyes. She remembers seeing it before - and she cannot remember when, anymore.

Corvo squeezes her so hard it should hurt, but Emily feels only the distant pressure and tries as hard as she can to cling to it. She sees his eyes, sweet honey brown and wide and glistening like calm waters in the dawn sun. Wet.

Emily hears the voice of someone who is not just invading but _becoming,_ and then she hears more, deeper. She hears the plans and the ambitions and the greed - and then she hears Corvo’s name, and she sees what will become of him. It is enough, just barely, for her to open her mouth and drag out her voice from the depths it is disappearing into.

She tells him, in no uncertain terms, to run. She cannot hear his voice anymore, but she understands that he will protest, and she tells him again. She _screams._ When even that does not succeed, she cries. It is like vertigo now, and she wonders if she is lying on the floor or if Corvo is carrying her; she wonders if she is still standing after all, and it is merely the feeling of her soul disconnecting from her body.

This time, she remembers who she is for just a second long enough, and she _orders_ Corvo to run away.

She does not know if she succeeds.

 

*

 

The first thing Emily is aware of is bruising kisses she has no context for, and a shivery heat on her skin. It comes and goes for a while, fading in and out of nothingness and then, slowly, she becomes conscious of a deep emptiness. For a while, the only lingering relief from the hollow echoes of herself are gasps that sound like someone else with her voice, and an undulating warmth that fills her every nerve and crevice.

Eventually, one day, she sees, and she is met with the sight of dark eyes that seem like liquid and roll when she feels the heat. Soon after that, she feels the shuddering, and it is so close and intense that sparks awaken within her, and Emily remembers that she has a voice.

When she uses it - _“Why…?”_ \- the dark nothing twists violently, convulses in on itself, and her senses ignite into being. It is like being born again - and agony overtakes her, warmth and silk and someone else’s skin like razors on her own, sounds that are so overwhelming she cannot barely hear them, only the cacophonous thunder they become in her skull. Tastes - _dark and bitter and sweet and wet_ \- and even the weight of her own tongue would make her sick if she could remember for even a second what a tongue is. The world is so bright and colourful and dizzying that Emily wonders if she is, in fact, dying.

She feels a surge, something she can’t name and yet recognises so deeply that the way her- her in-parts quiver and thump like speeding- like- _fast_ \- and the whoosh, the rush of sound and movement and something that’s empty and not empty at the same time- and it’s familiar, so familiar, and she thinks she should be comforted but she isn’t, and Emily believes, for a moment, that she may break apart.

Then she returns to darkness.

The next time it happens, there are no gasps or heat or blazing light. It is dark, but there is a warm non-darkness close by, something flickering and yellow. When she sees this time, she is met with sharp brown eyes - and she remembers, again, what eyes _are_ and that she _has_ them - and that she _should._ She remembers, all in a rush, that aware means alive and that alive means a _body,_ and when she wonders what a body must entail it comes to her like a fish comes to a lure. Weaving and curious, an almost-understanding that hovers and taunts until suddenly it is a very _definite_ understanding and it hurts, like a barb in her throat.

Emily looks into herself- no, her _reflection-_ and she sees brown eyes that have become narrow and deadly, in a face that does not show the round cheeks and clipped-to-the-side black hair that she knows she expects, even if she doesn’t comprehend why. Her hair is cropped short and reaches for the ceiling, sharp and dangerous - her cheekbones sweep up in regal inclines and her jaw is curved and narrow.

She leans forward and stares at the mirror, and realises that she doesn’t recognise herself.

And then she hears- is that her own voice? But she hears it, and feels the vibration in her own throat, and her mind is blank; she does not think these words as they’re spoken, and despite feeling it in her voice Emily knows, somehow, they are not her own.

“You can’t do this. Go back to the Void.”

Thus bidden, not understanding, Emily does.

The third time it happens, she wakes to the sound of her own voice again, speaking words that aren’t her own, and the mirror is bright this time, a small round thing in a room that does not seem familiar or right. “...op it, stop whatever you’re doing. Go _away._ This is mine, do you understand me? My life, my throne, my body. You’re nothing. No one.” And the babbling continues, except suddenly Emily realises that she cannot hear it coming back off the walls anymore, and instead it is coming from the dark hollow inside her.

The air tastes like flowers and sweat when she takes her own, first, glorious breath. Her voice feels like silk, and Emily remembers what silk feels like now, and she luxuriates in the warm buzzing feeling of being _alive._

“Who are you? I’m…” and it comes to her in a flash, “My name is Emily.”

The surge comes back, racing heart and jagged breath and- _panic,_ she feels panic even as the otherness inside her takes her voice again, and Emily lets herself drown in the panic because she has not felt such a thing for so, so long and she delights for it.

“Go back to the Void!”

Except this time, Emily does not.

* * *

The first time Delilah wakes up with Emily’s eyes, she bawls them out. She isn’t ready for the experience. _I feel your fear, I feel your pain, I feel your love,_ her ritual had gone, slowly unwinding Delilah’s soul from her body, and Delilah curses herself for being so foolish. She feels nothing but terror and anguish, and it takes a long time for her finally sob it all out until she feels like she cannot give even a drop more.

She finds herself, when she can bear to study her surroundings, in the Royal Protector’s room. The sword stand is empty, but she spots the beautiful blue jacket that will soon adorn Breanna’s breast, and calls up for comfort the thought of what she will do to the one who masquerades with it now.

Claim as precious Princess Emily Kaldwin, the moment she is coronated, that Corvo Attano worked with the assassin Daud and that he has been manipulating her from behind the scenes. Have him arrested, and tortured at her leisure until she grows bored - and then, when he is to be executed, she will whisper the truth in his ears and let his whole world come crashing down before he dies.

Delilah calls the plan up for comfort, she seeks to organise her thoughts into well-travelled order and pride, and she is not prepared for the way her heart beats hard against her delicate little ribs like a wounded animal as she does. She cannot stop the sob that tears out of her throat, and for a moment she finds herself off-balance, teetering in a world that makes no sense.

The image of Attano’s death, amidst acute agony, that she has so carefully cultivated from fantasy to reality rises in her mind, and she does not understand but it makes her vomit on the plush carpet. Emily’s tiny child’s body - _her_ body now - shakes as if in a storm, even as Delilah crawls back, shock and disgust warring on her face.

And Delilah has never predicted that any part of her plan would fail, but the image in her mind morphs and warps into warm eyes and long nights spent falling aslumber in the peace of Corvo’s loving voice, and she feels the connection like a cord looped between two ribs, and she finally understands. Emily has become hers, body and soul - and with Emily’s soul comes all of Emily’s love.

 _Yours becomes mine,_ Delilah’s ritual had gone, and she hates herself now, in this moment, for not seeing how literal that might be.

In the dregs of her soul - half her splintered own and half a shackled child - Delilah curses the Void and it’s reticent god with all the vitriol she has left to give. Once again, as had always been the case - even with the Mark upon her hand - anything the Outsider offers is not without cost; and this time, he has demanded a price so steep that Delilah does not know if she can stand it.

She does not look at her left hand, small and round, because Delilah knows that the Mark will not be there. She does not try to shadowstep as she forces herself to shaky feet, for while the Void has been woven into her soul so closely she will never be fully rid of it, she knows that this body knows nothing of its touch, and likely never will.

Delilah has given up her Mark and her god for a Crown, for the power to ensure that the world bends to _her_ will and not that of arrogant foolish men, and she refuses to weep for it.

When, then, she finds herself quietly weeping for the man she plans to kill, she wants to rage and scream and destroy; and yet, even when she punches the wall with all the strength she can muster from this unfamiliar form, she finds that she is weak and pliable, and succeeds only in splitting the skin of her own knuckles.

Emily’s knuckles.

 **_My_ ** _knuckles._

 

*

 

When Delilah next wakes with Emily’s eyes, she knows only too well that Corvo Attano is gone, and she does not know if she will ever find him. She cannot quite convince herself to try. He is gone, and that makes him not her problem - and she wants to taste his despair and enjoy it, but she knows now that she cannot. Emily loves Corvo so profoundly that the thought of ruining him threatens to bring Delilah to tears.

So she puts him out of her mind, accepts that she must begin again in her plans and work what little remains of Emily into herself. He is gone, and the Tower is in panic - but Delilah simply walks down to the gates, lets Breanna in, and keeps her close. When she is crowned, days later, she denounces Corvo Attano and turns him into a fugitive. Breanna Ashworth is named the new Royal Protector, and when half of parliament mutters their disregard, Delilah has half of parliament executed.

That night, Breanna rubs her ten-year-old back as she vomits until she cannot any longer. Dunwall learns what kind of Empress they have installed, and Delilah learns that Emily loved her Empire so much that the death of even her enemies may yet destroy her.

Breanna comforts her, and Delilah loves her. Some nights, when she dreams of Breanna, her face is distorted with Corvo’s, and Delilah eventually can’t tell the difference anymore.

A year later, the 18th day of the Month of Earth comes upon them and Delilah organises a memorial for Emily’s dead mother because not to do so is an extreme of character that she is not prepared to risk. She harbours a long-kindled hatred for Jessamine Kaldwin, and she is not prepared.

Breanna keeps an arm around her all day, and it does nothing to stay the tears and the flickering rage. Delilah flies into it without control, and when she strikes a noble who said just the wrong thing about Jessamine - about her _mother_ \- Delilah feels every bit the eleven year old she inhabits, and Breanna carries her away to her chambers, where she is free to howl. The sobbing takes a long time to ease, and Delilah hates herself for feeling a loss so keenly when it is not her own.

With quiet nothings and gentle kisses to her hair, Breanna comforts her. Delilah understands why Breanna has not kissed in her properly in so long, and she will not force Breanna to do anything she does not will - but Delilah is not the eleven year old she inhabits, and she wishes more than anything in that moment that she is able to embrace Breanna the way she used to.

 

*

 

When Delilah is fifteen (again), she finally forces the issue and kisses Breanna. It is done in private, after a long night of paperwork and trying to dissect the nonsense the Watch hands her into information that resembles usefulness.

It has been five long years of rule, and Delilah would not trade the Crown for _anything_ \- even though Emily’s emotions have long since settled into her own, and Delilah has forsaken executing every bratty noble who stands in her way. She has learned the grace of politics and her navigation of them has become a renownedly unique experience amongst the Isles. Delilah understands how she is expected to act, and what her tutors and advisors have long tried to impress upon her - and Delilah tries, she does, because _she is the Empress_ and Dunwall and Gristol and all the Isles are her domain and she would have it peaceful and orderly, but she is as ever a capricious being and she does not abide disrespect.

It is a moment of weakness, with Breanna. Delilah has all but forgotten what her old body feels like, and while she is an adult in mind, she has been a child for a long time now. She is fifteen and wild with it, and she loves Breanna with every part of her soul. She apologises, afterwards, when Breanna shies away and doesn’t come near for a whole day, but she is the Empress and Breanna is devoted, and Delilah always gets her way.

From then on, Breanna allows chaste kisses, shared occasionally and away from any eyes that may see.

 

*

 

Delilah is eighteen the first time she feels Emily stir. Only recently has she finally been able to push Breanna to allow nakedness between them, and Delilah takes every glory from it that she can.

Her Protector is awkward, at first, where Delilah remembers in her a fire that consumed them both. It doesn’t take Delilah long to realise that she is ashamed - eight long years have passed since Delilah took the throne and those years have aged Breanna to a respectable 39, if Delilah is generous. She is, in body, twenty years Delilah’s senior; this shows in wrinkles and marks and scars. More scars than ever, from her tenure as Royal Protector - for Breanna is wicked with a pair of daggers and has done her job with such devotion, and Delilah has inherited a great number of enemies from Emily Kaldwin.

So Delilah makes a point to worship those imperfections, to kiss scars and touch everywhere until Breanna comes apart and forgets to be ashamed, and only then does Delilah truly, finally let go entirely and let herself burn under Breanna’s touch.

And it is then, one late winter night, while she takes comfort in Breanna, that Delilah first feels Emily awaken. She does not recognise it, at first - she comes apart under hand and tongue, and Breanna kisses and soothes her through shuddering, moaning climax - and Delilah feels the sparks rupture deep in her soul and she does not recognise it for what it is, at first. She screams her pleasure and the heat coils under her skin and she believes - foolishly - that it is simply Breanna’s fire finally risen to full heat.

_“Why…?”_

It slips from her lips, weak and confused, and Breanna goes still and blinks at her, doesn’t understand, and suddenly Delilah feels cold. She knows only too well that it was her own voice that uttered it, a question of acute incomprehension, and Breanna reacts to the fear she reads in Delilah’s face immediately. She is on her feet, leaving Delilah to the ice inside her, and scanning the room carefully. Searching for a threat that Delilah knows she will not find - because Breanna cannot see the threat, and she certainly cannot save her from it.

This time, Delilah does not tell her, and instead demands her body and her embrace. They sleep, like this, a risk that they have not taken since Delilah was a child - wrapped up in each other so that Delilah might find safety in her arms.

Or, failing that, salvation.

When next Delilah feels Emily stir, she is searching for it. She stands, alone, in her chambers dressed in a silk while Breanna stands guard beyond her door. It is a lowly duty, and only thrice had Breanna herself ever performed it - but Delilah does not dare allow anyone else so close.

Staring into her mirror, studying the beautiful face she stole and grew into, Delilah takes a deep breath and looks deep inside herself. She _hunts,_ looking for the threads of connection that tie her to Emily’s fragmented soul; she calls up the face of Corvo Attano, a man that she has not thought about in years, and-- _there--_ Delilah feels it like the death of a witch that shared in her Bond, from long, long ago. Emily stirs, and unspools into ribbons that flutter through Delilah’s senses until they fade and buzz.

She feels it, the moment that she loses control to Emily. It is not unlike being submerged in water, a slick wet feeling that slurps her soul deep into hiding, and Delilah watches Emily lean forward and inspect the mirror with wide eyes. She feels the swirl of confusion, the rapidfire fall of realisation after realisation and then feels Emily settle into the body- _Delilah’s body-_ and Delilah forces Emily apart as much as she can, drags up her own voice.

“You can’t do this.” _Please,_ Delilah doesn’t add. “Go back to the Void.”

Emily has long been dead, and at Delilah’s request she slips away back to it. Delilah takes back control with a pop that reminds her of a blood ox calf being born, shudders and shakes and sinks to her knees. Weakly, she calls for Breanna, who is at her side in a moment and running gentle hands through Delilah’s hair, rubbing her back and then slipping an arm around her.

Breanna pulls Delilah in close, and the movement turns something in Delilah’s chest and she feels Emily; hovering, deep and slumbering, but very much still present. There is nothing for it. Voice breaking, Delilah buries her face in Breanna’s chest and does her best not to cry as she tells Breanna the truth.

_“Emily is awake and I don’t know what to do.”_

 

*

 

When Delilah feels Emily start to rise in the middle of court, she panics. Even Breanna is blindsided when, halfway through a formal entreaty on behalf of the Abbey of the Everyman, Delilah shoots to her feet and then flees.

There is nothing for it. Delilah sprints for the nearest bathroom - a small, unappealing thing - and slams the door behind her. She locks out even Breanna, who is there moments after and pounds on it. Delilah stares deeply into the mirror and sees, for the first time in nine years, the shadows of the Void slither behind her eyes.

She knows, then, that she is done, and yet she can’t help but fight anyway. “No!” she cries, shouts at her own reflection, because Delilah is no longer certain that the reflection is hers at all. “Stop it, stop whatever you’re doing. Go _away._ This is mine, do you understand me? My life, my throne, my body.” She’s leaning too close to the mirror, snarling at what she sees - because the face that blinks back is not her own. Emily is there, and she is offering Delilah a sweetly confused expression, and Delilah knows _damn_ well that she does not look like that and it takes every scrap of self-control she’s learned over her two lifetimes not to shatter the mirror with her fist. “You’re nothing. No one.”

And she _prays_ like she has not prayed in years, begs the Outsider to hear her, that it will be enough and Emily will sink away like she did before. Instead, Delilah’s reflection opens her mouth and speaks, and she feels her voice slide from her throat without her input.

“Who are you?” And by Void but she does not even sound angry. “I’m…” Delilah feels it, the strain met by a flash of memory, and in the mirror, Emily smiles. “My name is Emily.”

It is her doom, and all Delilah can think is that she has failed, and soon she will die, for when Emily casts her out of her body and retakes her reign, Delilah will have naught but ashes and filth to return to, and then she will be lost to the Void in death.

Perhaps, then, the Outsider may deign to speak with her again.

She cannot breathe, her vision blurs, and fear and panic overwhelm her - but she knows that Emily took an order last time, and Delilah claws for it with the desperation of a starving wolfhound. “Go back to the Void!” Send Emily back. Return _Emily_ to the Void instead of her.

But Emily does not listen, and instead she closes her eyes and takes a deep breath - and it is naught but reflection, and Delilah feels her body respond and breathe and begin to calm despite her.

“... I asked who you were. Don’t be rude.”

And Delilah feels like she’s been struck, flounders. She answers, automatically, because in court her etiquette is her most valuable currency. “I’m Delilah.” A moment later, she realises what she’s done, and she snarls at the mirror. “I’m the Empress.”

It is only when she sees recognition catch in Emily’s eyes that she realises she’s made a mistake. She feels it billow open inside her, along the seams between her soul and Emily’s - and only now does she feel the pain of those stitches, and only now does she understand just how jagged and patchwork a job she did. She was not whole when she left her first body - she could not be, even in a ritual done perfectly, for the soul is not designed to separate from its form until death. Emily’s soul is no longer whole either, because Delilah hacked it to pieces and then sewed together the bits that fit.

A piecemeal soul that Delilah tried to mend, and now they are both condemned to it.

“My mother was the Empress.” And now Emily’s eyes harden. “I am the Empress. _Who are you?”_

And Delilah cannot keep up the pretense anymore, because she has spent nine years absorbing every scrap from the fragments of Emily that she dared to claim as her own, and she wishes to impose her will upon the world - and Emily wishes to impose her kindness - and they are woven so closely together that it is one and the same.

When Delilah breaks down, Emily’s gaze softens in the mirror and Delilah feels her coil closer under their skin and caress her from within. “Tell me what happened. Where is Corvo? He can make it better, whatever it is.” There is such pious faith in Emily’s voice - _My voice, mine… mine…_ \- that Delilah thinks only of Breanna, and she cannot tell her face apart from the father Emily remembers.

But the door is locked, and it remains that way as Delilah sinks down onto the floor, regardless that it will ruin her dress. Breanna remains outside, knocking quieter now, still asking after her with terror in her voice and Delilah does not know if Breanna is scared because she doesn’t understand what has happened - or because she does.

It is Emily who offers Delilah comfort, and it makes her sick.

* * *

It has been ten years since the day Corvo left.

He has watched, ever since that moment. Nothing short of a direct order could have moved him from Emily’s side, that day, when she staggered into his quarters as pale as death itself and collapsed. She had asked him to run, and he had refused because he was her Protector first and her father second, and both bade him to stay. She had begged him to run, and he had crumbled within as her father, because he did not understand why she could want him gone and it felt like a sword in his heart, but he had refused because he was her Protector and he would give his life to her without hesitation.

And then she had commanded him, a tiny shaking body with ashen skin and half-blind with tears, and she had delivered it with such a fearsome voice that Corvo had been able to think only of her mother, of the Empress he had already failed, and he was her Protector first and her father second, so he abandoned his child and obeyed his Empress.

He had watched, sword clenched so tightly in hand that it had cut his palm, as Emily had dissolved into sobbing and screaming, and he had seen the Void shadows in her eyes. He had watched, when she had finally gotten control of herself, and an expression that he had never seen before crossed her face - something vicious and cruel - and then as she had vomited for it.

Corvo had remained, hidden, long after she had staggered back out of his room, and for a while he had waited for her to return and bid him return too. It had taken him until midnight to finally admit that it would not happen.

It had taken everything that he had not to return anyway, but instead he had blinked around the Tower until he could observe her quarters from the outside. Emily had slept, tossing and turning, and risen before dawn. That, alone, had made his throat and chest too tight to breathe.

When, mere hours after first light, Emily had made her way down to the gates and welcomed in a woman wearing roses in her hair and thorns on her clothes that Corvo had never seen, when Emily had hugged her so tightly she had protested softly, that was when Corvo had finally left.

Because whoever was wearing Emily’s face, Corvo knew that it was not her. He did not know how, and he did not know if Emily was still present, but he knew it had been his daughter who had come screaming into his chambers to warn him and command him to leave, and he knew that it was not his daughter who had left those chambers hours later.

Corvo knew that he would discover the truth and save Emily as he was bound to do, as he desired more than anything else to do. This conviction alone gave him the strength to leave and begin anew his quest to protect his family.

Days later, when word reached him that newly crowned Empress Emily Kaldwin I had put a bullet into the heads of half her court, that was when he’d finally broken. He’d lost two weeks to that agony.

Ten years later, and Corvo understands who and what it is that rules the Empire of the Isles. It has taken a chance encounter with an assassin named Thomas who - after many days of persuasion - had finally admitted to being once a Whaler. Through Thomas, and a reluctant alliance that was held together by Corvo’s desperation and Thomas’ fear of Corvo’s blade, he had learned of witches in Dunwall and though the Brigmore Manor was little but rubble and embers now, he had - eventually - learned that their leader had once been a witch named Delilah. Thomas had confirmed that she had been, as Daud was, Marked by the Outsider.

Corvo had released him, later, when he’d run his usefulness through. It had been early, and Corvo still remembered his oaths and his morals. He had not slain a soul when he’d first been tasked to restore Emily’s throne, and he would not do so this time either. Only the year long dead end had eroded his will enough to torture Thomas to begin with. He had no desire to end the man’s life, not after that.

It had taken far longer to finally catch a witch that had once been in Delilah’s coven. From her, he had learned that Breanna Ashworth - the new Royal Protector - had been Delilah’s second in command. He learned that while many of the witches she had commanded now held places of various importance within the court or the Watch or whatever else they had desired, Delilah had forgotten others of her disciples. From the first captured witch, Corvo had learned the names of the other forgotten members - cut from her in blood - and then Corvo had learned anew the smell of the human brain when it was splattered against a wall.

Ten years later, Corvo is a lost man and he knows it. It’s too hard to care. Corvo will walk into the Void willingly if it means restoring Emily - and now, after carving his way through the others that Delilah had forgotten, Corvo understands precisely what that will require.

He doesn’t know how to reverse such magic. He knows that, if he succeeds, he is going to catch Delilah’s soul as it departs Emily’s body and rend it into shadow. But to learn how to reverse the atrocity Delilah has committed, he needs help.

The Outsider hasn’t spoken to him in four years.

So here he is, today, standing ankle deep in the blood of the men he killed to ensure peace here, in this building. Corvo feels it like a second heartbeat, the death that he has dealt, and he embraces that damnation.

Anything, _anything,_ for Emily.

Even that which she would abhor.

He can taste it in the air, how thin the veil is here. He is deep in Karnaca, because he has tracked his enemies across every nation in the Isles and it is here, in the heart of Serkonos, where his memories threaten to run away with him, that he has found the weakest points. The Void is close, here - echoes break through. Sometimes, if he is careful with how he applies his Mark, Corvo can tease the veil open enough to see through windows of time as it shatters. He has seen many things that might be, that are not, by doing this.

Today, Corvo is sure that he understands how to do it.

He reaches out with his left hand, feeling for the buoyancy of the Void where he can almost touch it. Light hisses and spits from the Mark in his skin - it glows a golden-blue, and he relishes that burning pain that accompanies it. Corvo deserves far worse.

When he finds it, the tiniest thread in the air where the Mark turns incandescent and draws out a low moan of pain, Corvo stops. He holds, panting as the scorching defiance of his Mark spreads up his arm, into his chest. The Void inside him reacts to the touch, connects to the Void seeping through the veil. It _hurts_ \- almost more than his time in Coldridge, it hurts so much that Corvo can’t see through it, so much his stomach roils - but Corvo holds, lets the Void roar through him, devour him from the inside.

Slowly, ever so slowly, the tear opens. It rips, softly, in the air - a tinny faint sound, like lightning caught in a bottle. The Void is an insatiable thing. It bursts through the tiny hole and erupts like a volcano, savaging the real world as it does.

It is not supposed to be here, untamed and uncontrolled, and it will not last for very long. Corvo intends to step through, to surrender himself to the Void until he succeeds in hunting down the Outsider like he has hunted everyone else, and he intends to… He does not quite know, yet, if he can fight a god. Perhaps he will have to beg. Perhaps he must make a deal.

Whatever it is, Corvo intends to do it. Anything, for Emily - and therefore, anything to ensure the Outsider tells him how to save her.

Corvo intends this, but when he lowers his hand and the Void splits apart like a pregnant belly being cut and its innards spill out, Corvo realises--

It is not just the Void that spills from this rift he's forged.

A savage thunder fills Corvo’s ears, when he recognises the man who first tumbles from the Void and then leaps and scrambles like a wild animal. His sword is in hand, and this time - _this time_ he does not hesitate. He swings, and even as his blade passes through the rift and it seals itself with a sound like newly fed bloodflies bursting, the man vanishes in a blur of shattered nothing and lands on Corvo’s shoulders.

They go to the ground, sword lost, and there is no elegance to the way they fight. Corvo summons wind to blast him back, and in return he finds himself lifted and hurled into a wall - tethered and then thrown in a split second, faster even than he could blink out of the grip.

Corvo summons rats, _swarms_ of them, feels the Void construct itself into temporarily living things at his command, and sets them loose.

The things that are summoned in response make Corvo want to die. They are wolfhounds, or at least they may have resembled wolfhounds once. Three of them, and they have no fur, their bodies twisted half inside out, blood and body juices and liquid Void dripping from every inch. Black ichor drools from their mouths - and they have not just the mouths in their faces, but more - jaws and teeth and sticky black that dribbles steadily from what should have been a throat, from legs and guts and, in one case, from behind ribs that jackknife the wrong way from a spine that rotates as the creature moves and ripples with exposed, decaying flesh.

It is then, and only then, that Corvo wonders how long Daud has been in the Void.

When Daud screams Delilah’s name, Corvo goes cold - and then, he realises, he remembers. Jessamine is dying in his arms, her blood is everywhere, but Daud was spat from the lips of every witch Corvo executed, as if he was a great obstacle. He remembers- that the witches hate him, because Daud stood in their path every step of Delilah’s loathsome way, and that he was in the Void to start with means only that he failed.

As Corvo has failed, for ten long years.

The rats disappear, and Corvo windblasts away one of Daud’s abominations. When it cracks against the wall, it explodes with a sucking wetness that makes Corvo shudder, even now. Even the thought of possessing such a horror fills Corvo’s throat with bile, so instead he snatches up his blade and bisects them in two hard swings. They turn to ash as they die, and then dissolve into Void whispers and then nothing.

Daud does not react the first time Corvo calls his name, and Corvo drops his sword when Daud leaps at him. They tumble, roll through blood and muck and invisible Void residue, and when Corvo comes out on top and pins Daud down, the assassin _bites_ him.

It makes Corvo snarl, and Daud’s teeth sink through the skin of Corvo’s forearm and blood spills out across his face; but Corvo presses down instead of pulling away and Daud suddenly cannot move. His mouth is full of Corvo’s blood, and for a moment he struggles like he’s forgotten that he needs to breathe. Only when his body remembers for him, and Daud gasps in sharply through his nose, does the crazed bloodlust dim in grey eyes.

 _“Daud,”_ Corvo spits, pressing down a little harder and ignoring the way Daud’s teeth sink in a little deeper. _Ignoring-_ no, he doesn’t ignore it. He savours it. Corvo deserves pain for all that he’s done.

This time, Daud snarls and it is one of recognition. Corvo isn’t sure if Daud recognises _him,_ not yet, but he at least knows his own name.

It is enough. “Stay the fuck down, Daud.” And now Corvo rips his arm away, and Daud chokes on the blood and when Corvo moves back, just far enough to give him some leeway, he turns and spits, and Corvo knows that the blood that splatters on the ground is far less than the blood Daud has swallowed.

Grey eyes fix back on him, and there is absolutely no sign of the narrow glare Corvo remembers. Arrogance and pride have been wiped away utterly. There is bloodlust there, still, a manic glint and a faint tremble in Daud’s limbs that betray him. But he takes a ragged breath and speaks, and his voice is cracked and weak like ruined marble, and Corvo wonders how long it’s been since he had need of it.

“Corvo.”

It doesn’t sound like a man acknowledging him. Corvo is reminded of the Pandyssian parrots that had once been given to Jessamine as a gift. They had spoken like that, mimics of humanity that lacked soul - but Corvo had seen a keen intelligence in them all the same. Within a month, they had killed each other within their gilded cage.

Daud meets his gaze, a wild untamed thing, more animal than human, and Corvo sees with absolute clarity that the man he had been is long dead. This Daud isn’t lost to the Void, he is _of_ the Void - and he is _feral_ with it.

“You said Delilah.”

Daud doesn’t even respond with words. He _snarls_ and blackness rises in his eyes, the shadow of magic except this is much thicker than what Corvo is used to seeing in the mirror, a facsimile of the Outsider’s eyes.

“I want to kill her.”

Daud snaps his teeth, his Mark flashes with light so bright it’s almost white, and then he’s crouched beside Corvo, much closer than he should be. He leans in, meets Corvo’s eyes. “I want to kill her.” Mimicry, lower and broken and Corvo realises that Daud is neither enemy nor ally here. He is little better than a dog in the pits.

But still. Dogs can be trained.

So Corvo grabs the collar of Daud’s clothes, faded and torn, and when he gets to his feet he drags Daud with him. “You’re going to help me kill her, and you’re going to do what I say.”

Corvo doesn’t know if the answering growl is one of agreement or defiance, and he doesn’t care. He scoops up his sword, hooks it to his belt, and he drags Daud out of the building towards his current hideout. He begins the long process of training the Void monster Daud has become.

After all, it has been a lonely ten years and Corvo will do anything to save Emily.

Even Daud.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Big thanks to the Outsider for being a real motherfucker, and also to the fact I'm going to tell you that this would have ended up Corvo/Daud if I'd gone further because I AM WEAK  
> But I didn't write it and unless I ever write more of this au I probably never will.  
> You never know.
> 
> MY LIFE IS A MESS OKAY BUT THIS
> 
> AAAAAAA
> 
> T H I S
> 
>  
> 
> OKAY OKAY. I'm getting back to MA&A I PROMISE.


	2. The Void Makes Monsters Of Us All

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Corvo has inadvertently rescued Daud. He gets to know him.
> 
> Or perhaps, he gets to know himself.
> 
> The Outsider already knows best.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> HEeeeeeere we go again again because I Just. Can't. Help. My-Self. Try not to think of this as a continuation chapter even though it takes place right after the first. This fic is probably going to become a dumping ground for every scene and thing that I think of that happens in this AU, and they very likely won't be in chronological order.  
> Oneshots and drabbles all the way, folks!
> 
> Without further ado, enjoy your Corvo-Daud Void clusterfuck ^~^

There isn’t much human left in Daud, Corvo observes on the first day.

It’s easy enough to get him into the cordoned off building; condemned to bloodflies, lost in the asscrack of the Aventa Quarter, just shy of the Quintana Gates. Surely it is scheduled to be cleared out, but Corvo makes sure that it doesn’t come to pass - not while he yet remains. Daud follows where Corvo leads, and while Corvo’s fully prepared to tandem blink him past the bloodfly nest he’s left intact as a sentry, the moment Daud feels the Void flare up he makes the jump under his own power.

Smoke burns off Daud’s Mark as he does, such as only happens to Corvo when he really presses the bounds of his magic reserves, or uses too much too fast. Daud doesn’t even seem to notice. He doesn’t try to flee, as Corvo drags him inside, and lets himself be shoved into a room and locked in.

Corvo’s sure that a simple locked door and shut window is not enough to keep the Knife of Dunwall caged, but Daud makes no attempts. For some time, Corvo sits and watches through the walls, and tries not to be unsettled by the purple discolouration of Daud’s body in Dark Vision, when it should shine pure yellow. For the first hour, Daud walks a circuit of the room, seemingly patternless; by the movement of his body after every round, he is surprised by something.

Thinking of the Void yields memories of how it shifts and cracks at every moment, and Corvo wonders if it is the solidity of the room that takes Daud off guard, or if it is simply that it remains the same.

Often, Daud forgets to breathe. Corvo can see the stumbles when the lack of oxygen becomes too great, sees the sharp jolt of his shoulders every time he takes a breath. This, Corvo understands despite that it triggers a deep seated discomfort in his gut: in the Void, there is no air. Over the course of his observations, Corvo comes to wonder just how much about being _alive_ Daud has forgotten, and how long in the Void it took to do so.

Once Daud stops pacing, and seems to understand that the room won’t change on a whim, he sits down near the centre of it. There’s almost nothing in there with him - no chairs or tables, nothing that he might use as a weapon - but he does drag the solitary blanket to settle upon.

Corvo watches the blackness rise up out of nothing, the Dark Vision whispers meaningless in his ears, and studies the white glow of Daud’s active Mark. When the light dims to a faint twinkle, he studies the shape of whatever Daud has summoned - and shudders. The shape of a dog; a wolfhound, like those before, and through his _other_ eyes, Corvo can see the wisps of Void smoke that coil off the creature, can see the loops of what must be viscera where they hang below its belly, the scrap that hangs off the side of its head like a shorn ear. It is a blessing that it shows only as a horrifically shaped silhouette through the walls, a deep shadow that betrays its nature. For all the damage Void summons can do in the physical world, they are nothing more than energy and darkness made living at their master’s command.

It is a strange torsion in Corvo’s chest, hatred and pity as one, as he watches Daud lean close to the monster he’s created, and then it all becomes revulsion. The assassin touches, nose to nose, and then runs a hand down the creature’s length. Darkness drips off the silhouette, sticks to Daud’s purple-contaminated yellow when he sits back up straight - a shadow curls off the once-was-a-wolfhound’s back and vapourises into nothing. Distant and echoed, Corvo hears Daud - for the first time since entering the room - speak. If, truly, it can be called thus.

He doesn’t use words, talking to the horror he’s constructed. It’s a low sound, like a rumble; and when the wolfhound rumbles back, Corvo feels it through the Void and shudders again. And for some time, Daud remains that way; the wolfhound curls up on the floor and Daud leans against it, and the low wordless sounds drift quietly into the air. They’re so soft that without the magic fine-tuning his senses, Corvo knows he would not hear it through the walls, and yet it almost seems a conversation that they carry on - if only Corvo understood it.

The smoke, when the creature dissolves back whence it came, rises in twin spires from its body and Daud’s left hand, and when it’s gone, Daud slumps over where it supported his weight and doesn’t move. It is a moment of panic, in which Corvo springs up and frantically unlocks the door. If Daud dies now, then there is no _point._ But, Dark Vision fading, Daud is still breathing when Corvo slams open the door and strides into the room. He doesn’t even stir, sprawled out on the blanket in the middle of room in a twisted position that must be uncomfortable. Eyes closed, even breaths.

Asleep.

And for a moment, it _consumes_ him - Corvo can only see Jessamine supine on the gazebo floor, drowning in a puddle of her own blood, limbs askew as if she’d taken a tumble out of bed. His vision is _red_ this time, instead of yellow and grey, and Corvo barely even feels himself move until he realises he’s half-knelt by Daud’s side, and his blade is pressed against Daud’s throat.

Dribbles of red spill around the point of contact, staining a sword already too heavy with blood, and still - Daud does not respond. His breathing stops a moment, picks up faster, his hands twitch, and he does not wake.

It hurts, it hurts so much that Corvo grits his teeth against the sob writhing in his chest, but he pulls away and lets his sword fall to the floor. Drops onto his own ass, a heavy thud, and stares at the man who murdered Jessamine in cold blood, for no reason other than he was paid to - the man who made Corvo watch the light go out in the only eyes he’s ever loved.

The man who made _his daughter_ watch her mother bleed to death while Corvo was rendered helpless.

Daud sleeps, utterly vulnerable, and Corvo isn’t sure what hurts more: that he - _again, again_ \- is choosing not to kill the man who tore down his entire world, or that this creature sleeping before him is not any longer that man.

To be honest, Corvo isn’t certain that Daud is a man at all, anymore.

Corvo leaves with his sword, summons a pair of rats to observe Daud in his absence. It is unfair, but he kills the guard who loiters outside the nearby marketplace; a small thing, meant only for limited and local trade. Self-loathing floods his chest as Corvo silently slips the blade into the guard’s body, an inch to the left of his spine, and angled up to ensure that it cuts through his heart - or, failing that, at least rips open a lung. He knows that he needs only to use the end of the blade to do so, that the injury is already fatal - and he keeps going until he feels the metal scrape bone, and then flexes muscle and magic both until it punches through, and the guard’s ribcage cracks open.

Only when he sees the stained-red tip of his own sword over the guard’s shoulder does Corvo relax the pressure, and he steps back and withdraws the blade in the same motion. The guard gurgles, once, and collapses into death. The blood is on his hands now, hot and sticky, and the smell of it rushes up around him - so familiar as to be almost comforting, even as Corvo’s stomach turns and he condemns himself.

_Jessamine would be so disappointed._

And the thought is punishment enough, for the savagery and cruelty he’s enacted over the last ten years. Not so for all that which he has yet to commit - and yet, he knows, he will still continue.

Corvo rarely thinks of her as ‘Jess’ anymore. He doesn’t deserve to.

As he walks the market, he wears the blood and the blade openly, and most who catch his eye scurry out of his way. Those few who are too brave and stupid to do so serve as quickly-dispatched examples to everyone else as to why they should. Those merchants who have come to trade today bleat quietly and cower behind their wares when he comes close. When he approaches a produce stall, there are no protests as he takes three apples and a peach; a minute later, there is much the same response for the two loaves of bread he picks up.

They do not question him, and he lets them live.

For some time after that, Corvo wanders the rooftops of Karnaca. He is, tacitly, searching for the flutter of the Void against his skin; for another spot where the veil wears thin and the Void is close enough to touch. There are several places he passes over that offer promise, but nothing quite so jarringly electric as where he dragged Daud back into the real world.

So, for some time more, Corvo comes to a rest on the roof of the building standing opposite that in which Daud sleeps, and eats one of the loaves of bread. He is long used to managing the appetite that commanding the Void brings with it - a seemingly unending thing, a monster in its own right. When first, the Outsider had branded him, there had been times he had failed to separate the lingering hunger of it from the malady, and ate himself sick.

It has been a decade since he’s made the mistake. So, once the loaf is gone, he slowly nibbles on the peach and loses himself in thought while what magic he wasted blinking from roof to roof slowly restores. There is rather more thought to have than he’s had the luxury of for years. Now, unfocused, he can hear the faintest shiver of Voidsong in the air.

A low sound, equal distance between a vibration and the shrill of whale song, almost silent and yet so sharp that Corvo feels it under his skin, creeping and prickling. If not for Daud, Corvo would hunt for a rune; but it is Daud, and the Mark on his hand that sings with it.

Eventually, he returns in proper fashion, and finds that Daud has not woken.

And Daud does not wake for the next two days.

By then, Corvo is worried. Not for Daud’s life, not for its own sake - but failing the Outsider, Daud is the best shot that he’s had yet of figuring out how to undo what Delilah has done to Emily. Daud has fought Delilah before, and even if he lost, he has a better understanding of the ritual than Corvo does. That he was in the Void, and in physical banishment, Marked and substantial where he has no right to be, means that he has tasted Delilah’s magic. If yet the Outsider refuses to speak with him, then Daud might hold the key.

Corvo tries, after the first day, to wake Daud by force. By the second, he has not succeeded in any capacity, and Daud remains curled up on the thin blanket and sleeps. He does not seem sick, insofar as Corvo can tell; he twitches away from pricks between the fingers, his pupils react when Corvo lifts his lids, he holds no sign of fever or infection, his breathing is steady.

Simply, he just will not wake.

It has occurred, to Corvo, to wonder when the last time Daud actually slept _was._ He has walked the Void for a long time. In the days Daud hasn’t roused, Corvo’s thought a lot about that. It seems a safe presumption that Daud was banished when he failed to stop Delilah - and it has been a long ten years since then. Time is meaningless in the Void, this is something that Corvo _knows,_ but it isn’t something he feels he _understands._ His own visits to the Void have been brief, and at the Outsider’s behest, and he hasn’t seen it for years. Existing outside of time is something Corvo can imagine - and all he has to do is bend time to remind himself, regardless that doing so is a huge waste of magic - but he imagines it in the same way he remembers a half-forgotten dream. The longer he ponders, the more he is sure that he doesn’t truly comprehend the reality of living without time.

And, with time, there is the absence of sleep, of needing to eat or drink, of needing to _breathe._ It helps, that rationale. If Daud hasn’t slept in ten years - or… whatever passes for it within the Void - then of course he would crash once he returned to the real world. Rules apply here, rules that are meaningless in the Void.

It is still a queasy, uneasy thought, that Daud might have summoned an undead wolfhound simply for _company_ \- but Daud isn’t dead, and the living get lonely; Corvo knows this only too well.

Perhaps it is part of why he’s so reluctant to kill Daud. Or why he can’t help the writhing disquiet that Daud may not yet wake.

He tries not to think about that.

When, mercifully, Daud _does_ wake, it’s at first a silent affair - he twitches unbidden, takes a deeper breath than normal, opens his eyes. Corvo sees only because he’s sitting against the wall in the same room, anxiously chewing on a salted blood ox flank, and it’s forgotten when Daud moves. Then, he lets out a fearsome sound - somewhere between a snarl and a hiss - and leaps backwards.

Whatever else the Void may have done to him, Daud has not lost any of his physical strength and agility. He’s in a low crouch, teeth bared and eyes fixed on Corvo - wild eyes, clouded with Void and bloodlust - and his Mark glows blindingly white, thick black smoke billowing off in plumes.

Black puddles of Void energy boil at his feet, dragged through by Daud’s magic and as yet unformed into a tangible summons. It’s more than just holding the magic, prepared to defend himself should Corvo threaten him - and he must be disoriented, waking up for the first time in so long. Daud has already _used_ the magic, already broken the porous seal that the Mark provides and warped energy into reality. He isn’t holding the magic, he’s _floating_ it; here and threatening, and ready to respond faster than Corvo could call and construct in response. He’s quite certain that even a blink would be met with a twisted wolfhound’s jaws around his leg.

And then, moments later, the Void energy dissolves back into nothing and the light goes out in Daud’s Mark. For a moment, grey eyes roll - Daud collapses. Corvo lets him; doesn’t dare risk getting close at speed. When Daud doesn’t immediately move again, he slinks into range - there is a low moan, as Corvo nudges Daud with a boot. When he’s rolled over, eyes scrunched against the light, Corvo crouches down and briefly touches two fingers to his skin. Cold; despite the heat of Karnaca.

Magic exhaustion. And Corvo isn’t surprised, given the fact Daud has yet to eat anything, and the blatant overuse of power he just offered. If Corvo burned through enough magic to cause that much smoke in only a few seconds, he’s quite sure he would collapse too.

It strikes him, again, all at once, as he turns to get an apple. _Daud has been in the Void._ He uses magic with such flagrant disregard because he’s not used to encountering his own limits. Corvo’s used his Mark in the Void before too - and it bypasses their internal magic entirely, and draws directly on the Void itself.

Suddenly, training Daud into something halfway useful is a much more daunting task than Corvo expected. Perhaps he’d be better served by killing him and moving forward on his own.

And yet, he still comes back with an apple and a knife, watches Daud struggle into a sitting position, and then cuts off a piece - offers it.

Daud stares at it like he doesn’t recognise it. After a minute, he stares up at Corvo instead, and there’s something weary and uncertain in those grey eyes, something that reminds Corvo of a stray cat unwilling to risk being caught. A foolish desire, given that Daud has all but handed himself over to Corvo’s mercy - what there is of it, _again, again_ \- and yet it triggers a strange contraction in Corvo’s chest.

Nothing is left of the mighty proud assassin. There is just Corvo’s new pet, and the Void that resides within him.

So, he eats the slice of apple himself, crunching it between his teeth with a little more force than necessary, so that Daud clearly sees. Then, frowning, he cuts off another slice and offers it again. This time, hands trembling with fatigue, Daud takes it - confusion, still, in his face. He inspects the fruit, looks up to Corvo, looks back down. Almost as if afraid it will bite him first, Daud lifts the apple to his mouth and chomps down. His teeth are sharp; almost inhumanly so, as Corvo gets a look at them. One near the front is missing, the gum underneath unnaturally dark. Glimpses, as Daud chews open-mouthed, two more missing teeth in the same state.

A familiar shine comes on in Daud’s eyes as he swallows. The action looks to be uncomfortable - painful, even - but the look is manic and Daud lets out a soft snarl of demand. All too aware of the Void’s ravenous hunger, and knowing that Daud must have all but forgotten the good a meal can do even in the face of such extreme magic fatigue, Corvo simply tosses him the rest of the apple.

It’s caught in both hands, and devoured whole in thirty seconds. Juice clings to Daud’s jaw and fingers, sticky, and he lets out a low noise that reminds Corvo of a dog’s whuffle; nothing like that of a wolfhound, or their larger ancestors. Closer to the unthreatening growl of a housepet, the smaller floppy things bred for nobility to parade as if the creatures still bore any right to be called _canids._ Daud licks his hands, uncaring for the blood and Void ichor that’s dried to his skin in ruddy black flakes. Looks up at Corvo again with a sharp, piercing stare. He makes the sound again - it rolls from his throat, almost questioning, as if he’s _asking--_

“Corvo,” comes out afterwards, Daud’s voice as cracked and worn as before. It barely sounds human, as if a beast had learned to enunciate language but doesn’t quite have the shape of mouth suited to it.

Corvo realises, all at once, that Daud is _speaking_ to him, and he simply doesn’t understand whatever complexities of sound that have become his language, his long years in the Void.

That in mind, it’s easy to decipher what he’s asking. “Wait,” Corvo commands him, doesn’t stick around to see if it’s obeyed. He still locks the door behind him. When he returns, ten minutes later, it’s with another apple, a loaf of bread, a bottle of cool water, and a jar of sweet Serkonan lemon-water. Daud has not moved from where he was bidden to stay - but he is also not alone. Pale light, white, sparks and spits from a guttering Mark on his left hand, but Daud rumbles softly to the cat-like creature coiled around his shoulders and licking his face. It… purrs, if Corvo can call it that; a low vibration that he can feel against the Void inside him but cannot hear.

He hesitates to call it a cat. Fur sprouts from leathery black skin in patches, a shimmering purple, and its face is adorned with six shining eyes, each a different size and colour, and each weeping sticky dark tears like ink. Ears - thankfully, two - sprout from either side of its head, and if they weren’t torn and ragged then Corvo would think them far too large. A tongue, grey and forked and glistening, rolls from between jagged cracked teeth, too long and following the traces of apple juice still on Daud’s chin. It has three tails, each a different length - the longest of them is covered entirely in the faintly luminous fur, and curled tight around Daud’s neck, as if it might choke him at any provocation. The shortest is thus because it is degloved halfway down, skin and fur and flesh vanished in favour of bloody, seeping bone, exposed vertebrae that have no business moving with such controlled intent as they do. Corvo can see its spine through his back, skin split across vertebra points in several places.

It has too many _legs,_ splayed out across Daud’s back from his perch across his shoulders like the cords of a cape; more tucked around his neck under its tail, lazily stretched out down his collar and touching his chest. Mercifully, the creature’s insides do not spill out from within its skin - but there is a translucence to the dark hide that lets Corvo see their shape all the same, squirming behind bones that seem too thin to yet support its own weight.

Daud looks up as Corvo enters, and he’s caressing the monster adorning him, fingers gently rubbing little circles at its throat. His hands drop when Corvo stops dead barely a step into the room, and the _cat_ lets out a sound that makes Corvo shudder - like the dying breath of a whale, deep and airless and resounding in his chest. Daud soothes it with a low whisper, lacking in its entirety anything that resembles words, turns his head and presses nose to nose with it. He offers another low sound, soft, and Corvo realises that - as Daud’s Mark dims and goes out and the creature dissolves back into Void tendrils and then nothing - that it is a farewell.

It’s an uncertain kind of tension, in his chest, as he approaches again and offers first the water. Daud treats his summoned abominations as if they were pets. _Friends._ They are nothing more than Void energy spun into living forms, like gossamer thread spun into silk, but yet… Daud carries on in quiet unspoken conversation with them, and seems to receive something in return.

It strikes Corvo, as Daud stares at the water uncomprehendingly and Corvo sighs, opens the bottle and takes a sip before offering it again, that humanity is not a solitary animal. Loneliness has driven Daud and Corvo both to this fragile situation they find themselves in.

Daud takes the bottle in unsteady hands, and the trembling is worse now than when Corvo left. He studies the bottle for a few moments, as if trying to figure out how it works - whatever energy he gained from most of an apple gave him the arrogance to perform a summons (and relatively complex, at that), and now he’s on the verge of collapse. When he figures out the bottle, it’s turned on its end and Daud drinks as much of the water as he spills. He’s soaking wet and shivering, dropping the empty bottle and still swallowing, and his eyes fix on the jar of liquid and he _growls._ It’s soft, but quietly demanding.

Corvo opens it, offers it. “Slowly,” he orders, voice harsh. There’s a moment of defiance in Daud’s gaze as he takes it in both hands, but he does as he is bidden. The first mouthful is almost choked on, bitterly sweet and lemon-sour at the same time, and then Daud’s drinking the whole lot - and he does slow down, just barely. Enough that he spills only a little.

By the time he finishes the jar, Corvo is expecting him to make himself sick. It’s hard to be _angry_ about the prospect, even if it puts a weight in Corvo’s chest. After all, he’s been guilty of the same behaviour; if only Daud will _listen._ Daud drops the jar, and then _jumps_ when it smashes on the floor, eyes going wide and flinching back. Light sputters weakly in his Mark, a reflexive response, and he casts around frantically for the sound. His gaze sweeps right over the glass shards as if they’re of no consequence.

“Daud,” Corvo says his name roughly, and it tightens in his chest as if he’s swallowed river water - Jessamine is dying, still, bleeding out in his arms like an endless ocean, as if he could _drown_ in it - but it is a pain ten years old and Corvo stays its hand by clenching his own. His nails, bitten jagged, dig into his palm. Daud looks up as if he expects to be attacked, coils back, draws on the magic again as the Mark turns white against his skin, but doesn’t even manage to glow. The pain that passes over his face is blatant and uncontrolled. “No magic,” Corvo commands him, putting every inch of authority that he’s ever wielded into his voice. “I forbid you to use your Mark.”

It takes a minute, for that to process. Truth be told, Corvo doesn’t expect Daud to obey him - what reason does he have? It’s strange enough that he has thus far, that he has allowed himself to be shepherded away and locked in a room, that he has yet to try and tear Corvo’s face off his skull.

And yet, with a shimmer like panic in his eyes, Daud’s Mark returns to inert black and he shrinks back slightly. A soft sound, almost a coo - obedience. Submission.

In silence, Corvo tears the loaf of bread in half and offers him some. Daud takes it in a heartbeat; devours it in under a minute. Another sound, not quite a growl, more questioning and less demanding now, but he eyes the rest of the bread hungrily. Corvo hesitates - torn. Equal parts of him want to withhold it (partially because if he wants to maintain obedience and instil training, then it’s important to keep Daud reliant, partially to spare him the mess of Daud eating himself sick), and to let Daud have it, and learn his lesson the hard way.

So, after a moment, he lets Daud have it. “You should wait,” he says as he does, and Daud pauses with the bread in his hands - considers it - glances back up to Corvo in consternation and then - slowly, so slowly - raises it and takes a bite.

Before he’s even halfway through what remains of the loaf, Corvo can tell he’s reached his limit. The chewing gets slower, almost reluctant; and yet Daud painfully eats the rest. After so long, or whatever it is that passes in the Void, Corvo is all too aware that Daud’s body cannot handle the strain he’s putting on it - but all the same, the roiling Void’s hunger is absolute and infinite, and he doesn’t fault Daud for not being able to tell the difference.

It is one of the few things he cannot fault the… man… for.

“You should wait,” he reiterates when Daud wordlessly asks for the apple too, but he hands it over all the same. This time, he leaves - two minutes go by, and then he hears, through the thin walls, the unmistakable sound of vomiting.

Corvo has no intention of cleaning up after the erstwhile assassin. Instead, he lets Daud stew in it until dark falls, and then comes back. He doesn’t check the room with Dark Vision before unlocking the door, so even as prepared as he is for the astringent scent of bile mixed with undigested food and the foul sting of urine, he isn’t ready for the way Daud scrambles up from the corner - as far from the mess he’s made as possible - and darts closer to him. He stops, a metre away, and shifts his weight uncomfortably. Eyes Corvo with something that looks too much like desperation, stays coiled down in a half crouch, ready to flee and yet holding himself lower than Corvo at the same time.

Silently appraising him, and thankful that enough humanity remains in Daud that he at least didn’t simply piss himself, Corvo’s startled from thought when he’s offered a soft mewl from behind closed lips; it rolls as if with vibration, and is higher pitched than he would have expected gravel-voiced Daud to be capable of. For a long minute, Corvo doesn’t understand what by Void it’s supposed to mean - and then Daud shifts his weight again, cocks his head anxiously, and Corvo realises that it’s _greeting._

“Hi,” he returns from an instinct he’d thought long forgotten, still too taken aback to think about it. Then, he shakes his head sharply. Hoists the rucksack on his shoulders a little higher. “Follow me. We’re leaving.”

It is too risky to take Daud very far - at least yet, when he doesn’t know when to expect the strange compliance to end and can’t trust Daud not to burn himself out with a single blink (or whatever his teleporting magic is called, since it very clearly isn’t the same as Corvo’s) - but he has secured another building nearby. No bloodflies to guard it, and Corvo has no interest in deliberately introducing them, but several groups of Void rats linger in wait. Corvo has never gotten especially good at summoning, and groups of rats and - once - a single cat is as complex as he’s ever managed, but beyond the initial call and construction, it is an ability that requires mercifully little magic to maintain. Just a weak sliver, holding open the connection between summons and Void.

The knowledge makes the memory of Daud’s pet summons all the more unsettling.

But Daud simply nods - although to call the motion a ‘nod’ is generous at best, a flowing downward dip that rolls the full length of Daud’s body, from head to feet - and falls into step behind. He makes no attempt to flee as he follows Corvo to the roof of the building, and sticks closer rather than further away when Corvo scares him with the call of the Void and a burst of flame to set alight the last bloodfly nest left.

It makes Corvo’s skin prickle, smelling blood and hearing Jessamine’s dying voice, and Daud’s presence is like a slick, solid touch - too close, too heavy and _real,_ and yet Corvo swallows the urge to order him away. Better, he knows, to keep as tight a hold as he can. If Daud is willing to play the part of attack dog, then Corvo will not kick him for no reason.

And besides, he thinks, there is a reason Corvo spared him in the first place. It’s too hard, right now, to remember what that reason is, when the feeling of death on his blade is as comforting as it is sickening - but yet it must exist, and perhaps with a little more time Corvo may yet recall it.

This time, Corvo has left their new temporary sanctum distinct from the building around it. Apartments, two on every floor, and Corvo killed only the sole occupant of the one he intends to steal; one on the highest story. Once they reach the ledge of the condemned building, Corvo reaches back and grips Daud’s wrist - applies too much force, sees the pain that flashes unhindered across the assassin’s face, but he doesn’t make any sound of protest. When Corvo tandem blinks them across to the neighbouring roof, Daud convulses once, and a shimmer of white goes through his Mark reactively; when he’s let go, Daud stumbles slightly and hugs himself. He doesn’t seem too freaked out, so Corvo assumes that he understands what just happened, but he certainly seems to have not enjoyed the sensation of Corvo pinning two points of space together and moving from one to the next.

All the same, he follows quite willingly when Corvo drops off the edge onto the apartment’s little balcony, and slips inside. Four rats come running up to him, sniff his boots and coil around his ankles; unusually affectionate for Void summons, and with a snap of his fingers Corvo dissolves them. Scattered around the (forcefully) abandoned apartment, he feels the rest of the swarm return to the Void as well.

Daud is watching with a strange frown when Corvo glances at him. He shuts the door to the balcony, locks it, tries not to think about the man who is now a corpse in the building they’d just left. “You aren’t to leave this apartment. Understand?” Corvo asks instead, eyes narrowing.

Another full-body nod and a short, clipped growl of acquiescence, even as Daud looks away from him and something dark shadows his eyes. It will have to do.

Setting the rucksack on the couch, Corvo opens it and drags out a loose linen shirt and a pair of clingy pants; white and beige respectively, and light enough not to cause too much discomfort in the Serkonan heat. “Get changed,” he orders, handing them over. Daud is not exactly exposed, in the faded torn clothes he wears now, but Corvo recognises them all the same. Leftover pieces of his Whaler uniform, what remains of it, almost completely bleached of colour and offering only the barest of modesties where they hang off Daud’s lean frame.

Despite relying largely on stealth, Daud had been a little stockier than Corvo was, the last time he’d seen him. Now, while he hasn’t lost muscle or definition, he somehow seems angular in build, rather than powerful.

Staring at the clothes for a moment, it takes a while for Daud to understand the command, glancing down at himself and back up at Corvo before it settles. He drops the clothes at his feet and - seemingly without hesitation, not maintaining eye contact but not avoiding it either - strips off his shirt. A second passes in which Corvo is startled into wide-eyed stillness, gaping at the audacity of it. Daud’s got the deep olive complexion of Serkonos, darker even than Corvo with the bronze tones of mixed heritage, but it seems comparatively pale after so long without sunlight. Or… _any_ light, really, Corvo surmises. Scars litter his chest and stomach, innumerable and often overlapping, cuts and punctures spreading down his arms as well, spotting his shoulders like twisted white stars. The scar that tears his face down the right side extends down his neck and past his collar, a mess of jagged wounds that healed badly on his pectoral and the compression of what _looks_ to be an animal bite on his shoulder.

Only when Daud fumbles to unbuckle his belt does Corvo realise that he really has no shame left. Corvo turns on his heel, offering Daud his back. It sets his teeth on edge, having his back to his enemy - and yet Daud is unarmed, could not make a move without Corvo’s other senses alerting him to it, and has thus far shown no hostility. If his obedience holds, he will not even use magic. For as uneasy as it makes Corvo, having his back to Daud, it is better than watching him undress.

When the sound of movement and the rustle of fabric stops, Corvo gives it another minute before glancing over his shoulder. Daud is waiting quietly, watching Corvo from slate grey eyes, fully dressed. Whatever judgement Corvo made about his being angular is washed away; the pants stretch naturally, and so the skin-tightness of them around Daud’s legs is unsurprising, but the shirt is just a touch too small - chest and arms bulge ever so slightly, too muscular for the shirt’s intended wearer. He, of course, doesn’t seem to even notice.

Daud offers a low, questioning sound. Short and delivered open-mouthed. Anxious. This time, Corvo drags out two bottles of water from the rucksack, flicks the top off one and takes a swig, and then holds the other out. Daud creeps forward on swift feet, takes it, and while he’s figuring out how to open it, Corvo advises him: “Slowly.”

He doesn’t spill it, this time, when he drinks, and he doesn’t drink the whole thing. After several mouthfuls, he lowers it again, holds it close in two hands, and tilts his head while he studies it. A short hum is enough to make him look up again, and Corvo shows him how to reseal the bottle; Daud makes short work of copying him, and seems pleased as he sets the bottle down on the table. It takes, Corvo notices, a brazen amount of effort not to let go before the glass touches wood; Corvo wonders if Daud made a habit of simply letting things go, in the Void. It would makes sense, he decides. The Void has never even heard of gravity.

Daud still gorges on the half a loaf of bread Corvo gives him afterwards. While Corvo leisurely chews on the rest, Daud eyes him, and then eyes the rucksack. He shifts his weight, takes half a step closer, but his gaze flicks back up to Corvo and he doesn’t make a move. This time, Corvo produces a strip of blood ox jerky and throws it to him. “You should wait,” he says - and Daud freezes with it halfway to his mouth. Looks down slowly.

It’s not enough to _stop_ him from eating, not yet, but Daud exerts enough self-control not to shove the whole thing in his mouth, and instead nibbles on the end. It turns into irked chewing, when he discovers how tough the meat is.

Satisfied that Daud is at least occupied, Corvo glances out into the night. Closes the rucksack and snaps his fingers for Daud’s attention, before pointing at it. “Don’t touch this.” There’s nothing particularly valuable inside, and certainly nothing that Corvo would worry over Daud getting his hands on, but it is as much a test as anything. If Daud has indeed left the bag alone in the morning, Corvo may believe he can actually be trained. “You’re not to leave,” he tells him again, and then walks past him towards the single bedroom. “Don’t come in here without permission. Understand?”

Almost growled, that, but Corvo is finding himself desperate to be alone in some capacity. It has been a lonely ten years, but it has been ten years all but alone, and he is not used to sharing his space. Daud just nods, sits down on the floor, and goes back to slowly chewing on the jerky.

It isn’t comfortable, getting to sleep knowing Daud is so close, and his dreams - when he manages it - are filled with blood and Void and Jessamine at every turn. He doesn’t wake, too used to nightmares, but they make his heart race like thunder and lightning static fills his thoughts. Then, quite suddenly, Corvo opens his eyes - feels the breathless cold rush into him through every orifice and jolts to his feet.

He is, he knows, not awake at all.

The bedroom breaks away as it unspools from the bed, fragmented and dilapidated at the end of its time - or the beginning. Sky that only resembles sky the same way that a foetus resembles an adult of its species stretches out in every direction. It is somehow deep violet and pale blue and deathly grey all at once, and Corvo’s mind bends around the sight defensively, even as he knows that the hazy colours aren’t actually real but the only thing his brain can interpret from the immense eternal nothing of the Void.

For a long time, for a single beat of his heart, Corvo does not move. It has been four years since he has stepped foot in the Void, since the Outsider has deigned to call him here beyond his waking hours. Water - or at least, what Corvo perceives as water and prays is nothing more - weaves around the broken jagged island of this apartment bedroom in coils, liquid ribbons that serve only to remind him of the existent unreality of the place.

There is no benefit to remaining frozen. Listening to the distant call of the leviathans, Corvo seeks out the path the Void - the Outsider - always leaves in his wake, and lifts his left hand to aim. A brief tightening of his fingers, as if he’s caressing the Void itself, and Corvo blinks across the floating rubble he’d meant to land on, feels the surge of the Void around him such as he hasn’t felt in so long - overshoots by what must be a mile, finds himself tumbling into the abyss. Panic, for a moment, that seizes him and widens his eyes, and the Void _boils_ around him as he draws on the Mark, black inky emptiness - and uneven rocks form under him, catch him, and build themselves into an interlocking pathway that spirals up and up into the distance. They’re jagged and softly red. Blood amber.

Corvo wishes that he could catch his breath, adrenal fear buzzing under his skin, but the motion of his shoulders is habitual and grants him no expansion of lungs unneeded, no gasp of air to calm himself with. Instead, unwilling to admit how unsteady he is, Corvo rises to his feet and starts to climb.

It takes several missteps for him to readjust to the surge of magic when he calls upon his Mark, but once he gets the hang of it again, Corvo blinks his way up the twisting pathway of blood amber, up and up and up until he has to wonder if the damned thing is actually endless and he merely has to choose a point at which to get off. It rings with a distinctly Outsider kind of petulance and frustration - it is something he would do, just to see how long Corvo keeps at it, just to watch him flail with the decision.

When, in the blink of an eye that lasts more lifetimes than Corvo cares to count, he _does_ finally decide he’s had enough, he picks a direction at random - and pretends that direction is something that even exists here - and draws on as much magic as the Void will give him; blinks as far as he physically can.

The Void is not, strictly speaking, a _physical_ place, and it punishes him for it the moment he materialises. His Mark turns stark white with light, smoking in thick black plumes, and it _burns_ as if it’s freshly carved into his flesh. Carved with a dull knife, and by an inexpert artist. They’ve had to start again several times, Corvo tells himself callously - carved deeper to erase mistakes made. His other hand closes over the Mark, even as he drops to his knees on the floor that has dissolved into being underneath him.

He is utterly unsurprised to see the soaring white of the gazebo where Jessamine died.

It still tears open his chest, more painful than the Mark, and he cannot help the sting as liquid films in his eyes.

 _“It’s been a long time, Corvo,”_ greets the voice that Corvo has dreaded and prayed to hear in equal measure. He turns his head, doesn’t get up; the Outsider floats nearby, ankles touching and arms crossed, head tilted curiously. _“Or has it? Time is such a fickle thing, I find.”_

Painfully, Corvo swallows. Focuses on the Outsider and refuses to search the gazebo, refuses to find Jessamine dying here _again,_ trapped in the unending misery of her own life bleeding out of her into the Void. “What the fuck do you want, bastard?” he snarls instead, even as the boiling whiteness of his Mark begins to dim and eases up. Reckless, stupid - and he _wanted_ to see the Outsider, but drawn here right now, after Daud, feels like a depraved game and he hates it with a bitterness so strong he can taste it.

His Mark still hurts, shivering up his arm to his shoulder, a pressure sting in his collar bone.

 _“You see, Corvo, for a while Daud resisted the Void. He searched it end to end - to borrow a phrase - seeking a point weak enough to break through. Even with the raw potential of the Void on every side, he was not powerful enough to cut the veil. Not from this side.”_ The Outsider’s voice echoes in on itself as he teleports through smoke-black whirlwinds, circling Corvo like a predator does prey. Corvo drops his gaze to his hands, does not follow his movement. It is not only nauseating, but designed to force him to survey the gazebo in its entirety. _“The Void is a prison built on perfection and despair, dear Corvo, and no mere human can escape it.”_

Something so cold, in the Outsider’s voice now. Colder than even the Void around them, which is null and empty and has never known warmth. It is something Corvo has never heard before, and despite himself he glances up - and he’s met with tar-black eyes, so very, very close to his own.

There is, bafflingly, emotion buried deep within them, and they shine like ink instead of the hollow pools they normally are. Drops of black ichor leak from the outer corners, staining the Outsider’s face - and they are so tiny that Corvo isn’t certain he would have seen them, if the god hadn’t come so close.

 _“And yet, you found the places where the Void crowds close to your own world and you created a tear. To seek me out, Corvo? To pursue Delilah and the skin she’s made of your daughter?”_ And Corvo cringes away despite himself, looks down again and cannot make himself look up. The Outsider’s voice is harsh, cruelly so, and Corvo cannot help but wonder what he’s truly done to earn such ire. The Outsider does not care if he kills his way to his goals or not - he’s made it abundantly clear in the past. Slaughtering his opposition makes him _boring_ to the deity, Corvo knows this only too well, but he has never displayed such open enmity before. It is so jarring a change from the esoteric fascination or disinterest that Corvo expects that, for a moment, he wonders if the Outsider is okay.

The thought is wiped when the Outsider leans closer, twists just enough that Corvo cannot escape his gaze, and snarls: _“You could have simply_ **_asked._ ** _”_

Suddenly, the fact the Outsider is _angry_ with him registers, and it’s like being struck by lightning. Fear unfurls in his gut like fresh ferns, reaches tendrils into his chest until he feels it cold and sticky around his heart, and Corvo swallows nervously. That he licks his lips before replying cannot be unseen. “You wouldn’t speak with me.”

And the Outsider carries on as if he’s said nothing, moves away and removes the stinging oscillation of Voidsong that pours off him, leaving Corvo to shiver. He paces through the Void around them, a constant wash of flickering black ashes and ink, teleporting with each step - and Corvo realises that it isn’t meant simply to disorient him, to force his gaze. The Outsider is _agitated._

It feels, somehow, even colder now.

 _“And even when I accompanied Daud in his search, he insisted upon solitude and stupidity. As if anything that exists knows this place better than I. And then,_ **_dear Corvo,_ ** _”_ and the epithet is spoken like a curse, _“when he finally surrendered to the Void and allowed it to consume him, beyond all hope and turning himself over fully to the magic, he_ **_still_ ** _did not seek me out. When he grew lonely, he crafted imperfect monsters for himself. And_ **_you,_ ** _in your own infinite wisdom, chose to rip a hole in the world rather than simply speak to me.”_ He comes close, again, and Corvo feels the energy within the Outsider buzz and sing around him, like a sandstorm made of glass and mist. He shudders, even as the Void god leans down almost nose to nose with him, and finds he can do nothing but meet the puddling black eyes. _“Does it hurt, Corvo? Knowing you are not only training but sustaining the man who slaughtered your lover before your very eyes? He made your daughter_ **_watch,_ ** _you remember. Even now, as little as she is aware of, Emily still dreams of that day.”_

It’s like getting kicked in the teeth, as the Outsider says it. Suddenly, it’s no hardship to meet the pitch gaze, and Corvo rises on his knees before he knows what he’s doing - leans up, close enough to kiss the god if he had half a mind to, reaching to grab the Outsider’s shoulders. The stinging hum of Void energy is painful, as he gets too close to contact, and then in a swirl of magic and shadows, the Outsider teleports back and is at the other end of the gazebo.

His arms are uncrossed, slightly abducted from his sides. Palms open, he holds tiny swirls of… _something,_ substance, within them - a twisting light that’s black and purple and gold, and somehow seems to be more _absence_ than presence. Corvo looks for just a moment, and feels as if he could lose his mind into whatever impossibility the Outsider holds.

Instead, Corvo looks up and meets his gaze. “You know. You _do._ Is Emily okay? What did Delilah really do to her? How do I get her back?!” He’s on his feet and he doesn’t know how he got there, and he’s striding closer to the Outsider and he’s yelling-- _demanding,_ left hand clenched and glowing with magic as the Void shatters and cracks around them.

The Outsider doesn’t teleport away. He waits, allows Corvo to get close. There is something thunderous in his face, and even as Corvo knows he cannot fight the desperate fury consuming him, some part of him also knows he’s making an enormous mistake. It is a rare thing for the Outsider to display any emotion at all beyond mild curiosity or boredom, and Corvo has never seen him angry before. It is a stark change, to realise that he’s no longer the Outsider’s favourite toy and instead is about to weather his _wrath,_ and it only makes him think that he has taken for granted that the deity allows them to do as they wish.

It terrifies him, the sudden appreciation that the Outsider is _truly_ a god, a creature that exists beyond what petty understandings Corvo may ever achieve. He’s acutely aware that he’s being stupid, with every step closer, as the Void rumbles and splits around them. The Mark feels like it’s on fire in Corvo’s skin, blinding white; as if it’s been branded there with molten steel.

As he gets close enough to make contact and summons what magic he knows, fire and wind exploding from the cacophony of the Voidstorm he’s caused, Corvo sees in agonising clarity the truth he should have assumed already: _He cannot fight a god._

Just by raising a hand, the Outsider silences the attack, the singularities spiralling from his palms like tiny galaxies. He doesn’t even move, simply lifts an arm and lets the fire and wind wash over him and wither. There is a darkness in the Outsider’s face that speaks of a fury Corvo does not think he can even comprehend; the black ichor weeps freely from the Outsider’s eyes now, leaving streaks on skin that seems to effervesce slightly in the casual display of power, a faint luminescence that forsakes his usual humane appearance and makes Corvo tremble.

There is a flick, just of a single index finger, and Corvo finds himself thrown away, falling teeth over tail into the abyss, and this time there is no Void path that coalesces to catch him. His Mark burns as if it’s been cut out, and distantly, Corvo wonders if he can die in the Void. He has never fallen off the edge of the islands like this - what few trips down he’s made, he has always been caught by the wandering landscape. Is there even an end to how far down he can go?

Perhaps he will simply continue falling, further and further down until he is falling _up_ instead, and still it will not matter.

Dust and darkness billows around him, a dizzying vortex that trails behind the Outsider as he appears at Corvo’s side, and seems utterly at ease with falling. He’s close, not _too_ close, and the Void galaxies in his hands have disappeared - instead, it looks like they’ve melted into his body, the Outsider’s skin flickering with the black-blue-purple-gold light as if he might simply snap out of existence at any moment. Corvo knows, a deep and primal understanding somewhere beyond consciousness, that he would only be too lucky.

And yet it beats as a firebrand in his chest, _Emily, Emily,_ and he dares again despite all logic, despite the terror with stolen hands at his throat. “How do I save Emily?!” he shouts over the Void, over the falling, even though all is silent and even the whalesong seems to have gone still.

There is such implicit outrage on the Outsider’s face, as if it is painful, and the black ichor is bleeding from his ears and nose as well as his eyes now, and when he opens his mouth to respond, it drips from tongue and teeth like drool.

_“You had your chance to ask me.”_

And it is so raw, so forbidding and frigid and cutting, that Corvo cannot even feel the Void icy against his skin anymore, and instead the Outsider’s voice snatches away emotion and fear alike until it seems only that Corvo is drowning in it, lost to the glacial wrath of the very very depths of the ocean, where not even the whales dare venture.

Everything warps, in an instant, faster than Corvo can even fathom, and reality and emotion fracture and crumple. For a split second - _forever_ \- Corvo thinks that he has died, and there is nothing.

When he wakes, it is a sudden, violent thing. He thrashes as if gripped by convulsion, overturns himself, takes a tumble out of bed that he can barely feel over the _ache_ that is everything within him, the frantic searing agony of the Mark on his left hand and the Void bubbling inside him as if it might burst, and rip his body apart. The magic shears through him, and he hears - distantly - the shatter and crash of wood slamming into wood and splintering.

It isn’t until the wind and fire die down around him, each extinguished by the other, that he realises he’s screaming. He clamps down, reins himself in until he’s merely sobbing, a tangle of chaotic magic and excruciated tears on the floor. The bedroom is destroyed around him, lights shattered and the bed a broken mess, buried halfway in the wall. The door is in pieces in the hallway.

The wail escapes him, even as he tries to swallow it, and for a time he simply loses himself to it.

The Outsider knows, he knows how to save Emily, and he will never tell. Corvo has ruined it - every chance with the Outsider, Corvo has destroyed, through negligence, through pride, through incensed, _stupid,_ rage. He doesn’t understand, truly, why the god chose to let him wake instead of simply smiting him - and he wishes, so deeply and desperately that he _despises_ himself, that the Outsider had not shown him such mercy.

If he is dead, then he cannot help Emily and it is through no failure of his own. If he is dead, then he cannot bear the burden of defeat any longer, is no more the point of collapse in everything he holds dear. If he is dead, he can see Jessamine again.

But he is not. Instead, he lives, and _that_ more than anything proves to be as unbearable a damnation as any death.

Eventually, slowly, Corvo comes back to himself.

He is a mess. Breathing does not come easily, through the pain and accumulated gunk in his airways - he’s sobbed and cried for far too long, and he feels sandpapery and wrung-out, even as he’s aspirated and swallowed so much of his own tears and mucous that it sits heavy and sticky in his lungs. Every muscle shakes as he slowly pushes himself up into a sitting position, and not even the heavy Serkonan day penetrates the glacial shroud that seems to embrace him.

Raised with gooseflesh and hair on end, even Corvo’s arms seem ashen under the deep caramel hue. His face is sticky and itchy with salt, dry and damp at the same time; he is sure that the short beard is a loss, too clumped with snot to be worth anything but shaving off.

His chest feels like it’s caved in, like any delicate touch might break what remains of his ribcage. His heart, though beating, rumbles with pain and protest, and Corvo wishes that it would just give up; stop. There is a sickness unwinding in Corvo’s gut that he knows won’t result in bile, but it’s similar - and it twists, a hurt he hadn’t thought could be worse than he already knew, and he almost wishes that he would vomit instead because surely - _surely_ \- that is better than this.

By the time he stumbles to his feet, the sunlight is pouring into the room; dazzling, bright when it has _no right_ to shine upon the unmitigated disaster that Corvo has brought on himself. If he had even a fraction of the Outsider’s power at his disposal, he swears he would use it to blot out the sun. Daylight is a curse, an unwanted thing through which Corvo can see - only too clearly - how terribly and utterly he has _fucked up._

He wanders, almost idly, towards the bathroom. There is nothing for it: he is alive, and there is hope for Emily, even if the Outsider will never reveal it. With time, wasting more and more of Emily’s years, perhaps he can find it.

He has forgotten entirely about Daud.

He is reminded, violently, when he opens the door to the bathroom and talons the size of an infant’s forearm swipe at him. They miss, narrowly, but Corvo barely even reacts except to stare with wide eyes; they were not meant to connect. A warning shot.

Curled up in the bathtub, scintillating with purple energy that weaves from skin to fur to feather to scales, is a creature almost too big for its ceramic confines, the likes of which Corvo has never seen or even dreamed. It is, without doubt, a Void summons, constructed carefully by its master - who, Corvo belatedly realises, can only be Daud. Enormous and complex enough to show off the massive talent Daud possesses for summoning, the creature lowers itself, one foreleg standing outside the bath (because it will not fit within), and offers a low, vicious snarl.

Unlike the others, Corvo notes, this summons doesn’t seem to exist in a state of half-decay or unfettered horror. It crouches low in the bathtub, and… five… perhaps six tails dance in the air behind it; one is of resplendent violet feathers, flashing turquoise and gold as the light refracts off them, and woven between it are three longer tails that shimmer purple-black-silver with the long fur of a wolf’s. Two more, curled higher than the others - even longer, whiplike and deep black, and tufted at the end with bundles of purple-black fur.

The creature’s body is no less confusing and impressive. The hindquarters bunch and coil like a cat’s, rounded, and Corvo can see only one hind paw where it rests on the edge of the bath, hooked there by extended claws that shimmer like ink and are thicker around the base than Corvo’s wrist. The creature’s belly is entirely obscured, settled too low in the bath, but the shining fur flourishes up over smooth muscle that visibly ripples with each breath; smaller feathers, like crests, peek out in twin rows along the creature’s spine, gleaming blue-gold with inky black shafts.

Its shoulders sharpen, even as the fur turns darker and bluer, and its head almost resembles that of a wolf; a long narrow snout, tipped with a wet nose, and four large eyes, pure black the lot, that glitter with an inhuman intelligence and are cut with razor-thin slitted pupils in the sunlight that Corvo should not be able to see, but _can._ Its upper cuspid teeth extend far below its jaw, each as long as Corvo’s calves and thicker around besides. Ears, low and big and wide, the triangles of a mighty feline, are angled forward at Corvo directly, and from its head arcs a cluster of billowing feathers that shine sapphire blue and glister with gold reflections. Thicker than the plushest of carpets Corvo has seen even in Dunwall Tower, a mane cascades from its neck and shoulders, almost covering the end of the bath completely. Its head is extended beyond it, and there is no way in reality or Void that it could have ever fit inside the bathtub; it should not fit as much as it _does._

Only one foreleg is visible, placed on the floor between Corvo and bath, and the fur tapers into scaled black-and-gold hide, armoured with what surely must be calcifications under the leathery skin; the foot is like that of a hunting raptor, split into four toes each tipped with talons so wickedly sharp that the tile of the floor cracks and buckles under their touch.

Half-flexed above it, dazzling purple-silver, are a pair of wings that would be the pride of the skies, should the creature have ever been real and should it ever fly.

Corvo cannot even bring himself to feel awe, at the Void construct snarling at him, and simply stands in the doorway and stares. Slowly, the growling goes quiet, and the creature swallows and licks its lips. Eventually, after another small eternity, the creature rumbles and folds its wings - the ends extend far beyond its flanks, longer even than the tailfeathers - and then it shifts its weight and rises to its full height.

It’s taller than Corvo by at least half again, and its head feathers flatten into its mane as they brush the ceiling, its ears fold horizontal. Underneath it, curled in the bathtub, Daud peeks out at him.

It’s obvious, immediately, even to Corvo as he stands motionless and numb, that Daud is scared out of his mind. His hands cling desperately to the creature’s belly fur (paler, silvery white), and he presses close as it folds itself somehow half into the tub, shielding him but no longer finding Corvo to be a threat.

For a long minute, Daud stares at Corvo with tight eyes, evaluating and measuring, his breathing so ragged it grates in Corvo’s ears. Could he always hear that? Corvo genuinely isn’t certain.

Eventually, Daud lets out a low sound that reminds Corvo of a meow, and the Void creature ducks its head and licks him. Its tongue is deep, Void blue. A rumble in return, coiling tighter around Daud, and the assassin turns and leans up, uses his grip on the creature’s fur to steady his own weight, and presses his face against the creature’s muzzle. All four eyes close, and another rumble shakes the air. It tips the Void inside Corvo upside down, a sound so far below hearing that Corvo can only feel it, and this time it _is_ nausea that rears its head in response; he dashes past, panicked into movement - vomits into the sink.

Wordless whispers rise from Daud’s throat, and there is a swish of energy, cold air billowing around them as the creature is dismissed. Corvo spits, trying to get rid of the taste of bile, and then turns back to Daud. He looks… tiny, curled up in one end of the bath without his magnificent summons to guard him. Grey eyes shimmer warily, as he watches Corvo study him.

Then, he lifts his left hand - shows Corvo the Mark. Fear tightens around his eyes, anxiety pulling his lips thin; he makes a low shivery sound, shrinking a little, waving the Mark around slightly.

It’s an _apology,_ Corvo realises dimly.

For using magic, for summoning the Void after being ordered not to, for whatever - for _everything._ And it doesn’t mean a damn thing, it’s so utterly _worthless_ in the face of what Daud has done, of what _Corvo_ has done. It’s brittle and painful, like swallowing glass, but laughter erupts from Corvo in fits and waves; broken, jagged laughter that may as well have been tears, but - strikingly - _isn’t._

Daud shrinks back again, even as Corvo dissolves and sinks to the floor. The tile is pitted and torn where the Void creature’s talons touched it, tangible evidence of sins that almost - barely - don’t exist.

For some time again, Corvo is lost.

When once more he has regained a semblance of control, he no longer feels like he is dying, or unwinding. Instead, he just feels hollow. Carved out and emptied, like every emotion he’s ever felt has slipped through his skin and vanished into the Karnaca sun. He still doesn’t feel that, but he no longer feels so cold either. Everything is numb. Even the ache of the Void, magic abused, is too far away to matter. Daud watches in silence as Corvo gets to his feet, turns to consider himself in the mirror.

In silence, Corvo takes the razor of the man he killed to claim this place and shaves. It has been years since he’s been completely clean shaven, but he is so insensate that his hands are, miraculously, steady. Afterwards, he gathers his long hair in one hand and ruins the razor by cutting through the lot.

Razor and loose hair both are dropped into the sink, and Corvo stares at his own reflection - barely recognises it. His hair is still dark despite his rapid approach to fifty years of age, but there has been flecks of silver threatening at his temples for years now.

This morning, they’ve grown out to silver markings that band neatly on either side, and Corvo knows without even wondering that they are a gift from the Void.

He doesn’t feel anything.

“Stay here,” he commands Daud as he turns to leave - he does not know where he’s going, but he needs to get out. _Do_ something. If he had it in him to care, he might acknowledge that the pervading nothingness filling his body is almost worse than the pain and self-loathing - but he doesn’t, and it’s meaningless. “There’s food in the bag if you’re hungry.”

And Corvo leaves.

He doesn’t even have his sword, he realises, walks the streets boldly; hasn’t brought his mask - isn’t even wearing his gloves. The first person to cross his path glances briefly at him, a typical appraisal of strangers that flit by one another, and then her expression contorts and she looks back, eyes widening, panic rising in her in visible waves. Her mouth is open, ready to scream - she’s recognised him, and he cannot blame her.

His Mark spits and burns as he blasts her down with a gust of wind, and in the time it takes her to gasp back her breath he’s blinked to her side, dropped one knee sharply into her stomach, and put his hands around her head. Her eyes are wild, terrified, and then Corvo jerks his shoulders and yanks, and her eyes are nothing anymore as her neck _snaps_ and she dies.

And finally, Corvo feels a jolt in his chest. His heart thumps against his ribcage, a bitter reminder that he yet lives, and then something soft and tingling unspools under his skin and fills him up like helium. It’s equal parts self-loathing and glory, that he can kill so easily with naught but his hands.

He hates himself, he hates that it was almost reflex to slay a woman just for knowing his face - but it glows low in his gut all the same, and it’s almost arousal, that he has not just the will to decide what the life of another is worth, but the power to impose that decision upon them.

It bubbles up in his throat, everything - _everything_ \- and blinds him. Jessamine is gone and Emily is trapped within a witch’s soul, and the Empire is lost, and in their place Corvo has been given _Daud,_ who speaks but doesn’t talk, who murdered his way through an entire city until it was bones and carcass at his feet, who somehow thought to save a daughter that isn’t his and cowers behind the Void itself when he’s frightened - and he’s frightened now, so easily.

Corvo can’t even bring himself to feel angry. He is no better than Daud - he wonders, truly, if he has _ever_ been better than Daud. It feels like poetic justice, like the Void’s cruel, perfect joke, that he has ended up - after all - with only _Daud_ for company.

Karnaca runs red under his touch.

Once the night has fallen and Corvo finds enough of himself to return to where he left Daud, lucidity has claimed him. Enough that the guilt is sufficient to suffocate him, even slinking back on silent feet and a stolen container of roast chicken in hand. And he feels guilt, so much of it that he wonders if one day, he may drown; but he accepts this. It has been so long, and he has killed so many, that there is no turning back now. There is no redemption.

There is never any redemption.

And he wonders, idly, if this is how Daud felt, all those years ago, when he threw himself at the Outsider’s witch to try and protect the little girl whose life he’d destroyed. Perhaps - after all - Daud had been right.

They aren’t that different, cut from the same, blood-soaked cloth.

When Corvo opens the door to the apartment, he’s greeted by a stench so foul the blistering guilt flees his chest and he forgets about the blood on his hands. Cautiously, he sets down everything he’s carrying in the lounge, takes a note that the rucksack hasn’t been touched, and then makes his way back to the bathroom; the lounge is suspiciously empty.

Daud is still curled up in the bathtub, in a shallow puddle that seems to be made up of equal parts urine, sweat, and the liquid shit of sickness. He shakes, a constant tremor broken only by low moans of pain, and doesn’t seem to even notice Corvo come in.

For a minute, Corvo only observes, torn four ways between disgust, pity, disbelief, and a blinding panic.

Daud cannot be sick. For one, Corvo doesn’t understand _how_ he might be: Daud is Marked, his body so fortified against disease that not even poison or plague could touch him. In addition, he has been back in the world for all of three- maybe four days. He hasn’t had _time_ to contract an illness that would leave him as shivery and sick as he is now - and Corvo has been careful about what he’s allowed Daud to eat. Nothing was contaminated, and nothing should have been harsh enough to cause such an adverse reaction in his syst--

_Oh._

It hits him, again, as it keeps doing over and over, because apparently once isn’t enough. _Daud has been in the Void._ For the equivalent of ten long years, Daud’s body has been in Voidbound stasis - he hasn’t had to eat or sleep or shit or breathe.

And now, he’s back in the real world, and those things are unfamiliar not only to his mind, but to his body as well. It must be a shock, for systems and processes that haven’t had to move in so, so long to be kickstarted into functionality again. The human body has never responded well to shocks like that - it must be agony, for biological cycles long dormant to awaken so sharply.

Corvo can’t help the wrinkling of his nose, but he’s grateful that his sleeves are already cut short for the Serkonan heat. Coming closer, he considers tapping the side of the bath to announce himself, decides against it, and reaches for the faucets. “Daud,” he raises his voice ever so slightly, and Daud lets out a strangled sound almost like a sob and looks up at him. “... Can you sit up?” Corvo asks, his voice tight while he breathes in as little as possible.

It looks even more painful, as Corvo sets the water to running, but Daud claws his way up the side of the tub until he’s practically sitting up, fingers curled tight over the edge and hanging most of his weight.

For a few minutes, Corvo simply lets the water run, and it slowly heats up even as it swirls up the bottom of the tub and gurgles away down the drain along with the toxic slurry of body fluids. Once Corvo is convinced it’s warm enough, and the bath is as clean as it’ll get without scrubbing, he kicks shut the drain valve and lets it fill. Daud doesn’t seem to notice at first, clinging to the side of the tub and relaxing minutely at the heat, but when it comes up to his waist panic flashes across his face and he lets out a frightened sound - scrambles up.

Corvo’s hands come down on his shoulders and push him back down, and Corvo’s only grateful that above Daud’s waist is pretty much just sweat. “Sit,” he orders, and Daud drops back with a splash and a quiet whine, jaw clenched, shoulders tight. “You’re okay.” And Corvo doesn’t know why he adds that, but it feels… necessary. Daud is, for all that Corvo intends to train him into a weapon, in Corvo’s care.

And it almost reminds him of reassuring Jessamine, of caring for Emily when she was scared. It isn’t the same - it’s painfully different - but some part of Corvo is perversely relieved at the idea of _protecting_ someone again instead of killing and torturing his way through half the Empire. Even if that someone is Daud. Even if he doesn’t deserve to be anyone’s Protector anymore.

Even if Daud behaves more like a pet than a charge.

It doesn’t take very long for Corvo to get him clean, and once the water is drained away, he frowns and studies Daud critically. He looks better, even if the soaking wet clothing is starting to cool and make him shiver. Corvo isn’t greatly concerned about it - Daud’s Mark will protect him from catching cold, and the air is warm as it ever is in Karnaca - but it’s still less than ideal.

“Stay.”

He leaves, collects a blanket from the wreck of a bedroom, and then detours to the lounge to collect a portion of food for Daud. A smaller meal than he planned, but Corvo’s decided that it might be better to reintroduce Daud to living in smaller amounts.

When he comes back, Daud is hugging his knees in the bath, shivering quietly, but he looks markedly less awful than he did. He lifts his eyes to Corvo when he comes in, reacts to his presence. Corvo folds the blanket over the edge of the bath. “Take those wet clothes off and hang them, wrap yourself up in that, and then come out to the lounge.” He makes a point of waving the food back and forth a little. On his way out, even as Daud hauls himself to his feet and starts peeling off his shirt, Corvo pauses, frowns, and half turns again. “If you feel like that again, use the toilet like a fucking human being,” he adds, gesturing. “I’m not gonna teach you to wipe your own ass.”

He wonders, as he heads back to the lounge and settles on the couch to eat his own portion of dinner, if he’s being unfair. But Daud comes out a minute later, looking tired and sore but no longer as sick, and he sits on the floor against the couch near Corvo’s feet - curls up in the blanket.

Studies his food intently and then looks up at Corvo. A low growl, questioning and unaggressive, rumbles in his throat. “Corvo.” It’s almost hysterical a thought, as Corvo realises that Daud is asking permission.

There truly is nothing left of the assassin.

So, Corvo nods. “Slowly,” he cautions, again, and this time Daud complies; reaches out from the blanket, showing no signs of giving a shit as the movement of his arms bundles it around his waist and exposes his upper body again, and starts to nibble.

They get through dinner in silence, and Corvo’s mind swirls with blood every time he looks at Daud’s face - and it’s not just Jessamine’s blood anymore. Witches and civilians and half of the Aventa Quarter, even Thomas the once-was-a-Whaler whom Corvo _didn’t_ kill - it’s not just Jessamine’s anymore, because it _can’t_ just be Jessamine’s blood that Corvo sees anymore. He doesn’t deserve that righteous indignation; he barely deserves the twisting grief. Daud has killed many, but Corvo was never opposed to wet work before their introduction. While alive, Jessamine had shed plenty of blood through Corvo’s hands - in defence of her life, and less savoury reasons. Only in the face of watching the woman he loved bleed out had Corvo chosen to refrain from murder, to lead a bloodless coup.

And it fell apart, as soon as his morals failed and threats were no longer sufficient to get his way; to save Emily. Corvo has killed more people in the last ten years than he can even count.

Corvo has killed more people _tonight_ than he bothered to count.

So they get through dinner quietly, while Corvo thinks not about how much damage the man eating with him has caused him personally, but about how many others are out there in the world that Corvo has done just as dirty. He is, in the depths of his soul, no better than Daud. He has ruined families, torn apart marriages, murdered parents and orphaned children.

He has no _proof_ of these things, of course, but it is an impossibility that he has not. Too many dead. Everyone had _someone._

And it is just his fortune that now, after everything, who Corvo _had--_ seems to be _Daud._

Once they are finished, Corvo gets to his feet and stretches out, and feels Daud’s eyes on him like an unwanted caress. “Sleep on the couch,” he tells Daud, moving away from it. “Your clothes should be dry in the morning, and we can raid this place’s wardrobe if not.” Although Corvo has severe doubts as to whether the thin old man’s anything would fit around Daud’s broad shoulders. “We’re leaving tomorrow. So you better stick with me, you understand?” It’s growled - as true a threat as Corvo is willing to make.

Daud nods, the way it runs through his whole body almost invisible curled on the floor in a blanket, and offers a sound that Corvo can only describe as a catlike chirrup. A glance back, at the doorway to the bedroom, shows Daud tucking himself against the back of the couch and settling his head on his arms. Assured that he will sleep as directed, Corvo steps over the splintered remains of the bedroom door, uses a shallow windblast to dislodge the bed from the wall, and kicks the remaining foot out from under the frame. The mattress is pretty much on the floor now, but Corvo doesn’t care - he’s only going to be here for one more night. He can’t see Daud from where he sprawls out on the bed - which means Daud can’t see him either - but as he settles and listens in the quiet night, he hears deep, even breathing.

It’s… strange, now that he isn’t angry or panicked, to know that he’s no longer - technically - sleeping alone.

It’s even stranger just to consider that he is no longer alone.

Corvo isn’t sure if it’s a good thing, or not.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For anyone who's wondering; the other residents of the apartment building did in fact freak the fuck out when Corvo made a huge mess, but only the person on the same floor tried knocking and I didn't really have a slot to write that into since Corvo didn't hear it. Otherwise, it's freaking Karnaca - they stayed the fuck away from whatever batshit crazy is going on up there XD
> 
> I have a problem, and that problem is Void Creature Daud. _I am weak._


End file.
